The responsible consumer still suffers from an overly negative image

At a time when the President of the Republic himself is evoking the notion of sobriety for the first time, let's take a moment to consider what this unappealing term might mean for consumers.

Gilles Séré de Lanauze, University of Montpellier and Jeanne Lallement, La Rochelle University

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The question is well known to responsible consumers, who are astonished that there are so many who talk about it, but so few who actually do it. It's also well known to researchers, who are desperately trying to understand the gap between attitudes and behaviour when it comes to responsible consumption.

Now that the unappealing word "sobriety" has been coined, advocated and promoted at the highest levels of government, are we finally going to see a change in the image of the responsible consumer? Indeed, if the notion of responsibility is generally presented as positive, what about that of the responsible consumer? How is this image conveyed by the press and advertising? Do we really want to be responsible consumers?

Could we not hypothesize that the very image of the responsible consumer, an image that may not be all that positive after all, could partly explain the gap between attitudes and behaviour - the famous "do as I say, not as I do" - when it comes to responsible consumption?

An unsexy responsible consumer

The results of a study we carried out among consumers on their image of a responsible consumer identified several negative archetypal figures of the responsible consumer.

Based on an in-depth analysis of the interviewees' discourse, four unappealing metaphors shed light on the latent images associated with the responsible consumer. They include fundamentalist, hermit, killjoy and snob.

• Thefundamentalist (or ayatollah) expresses the perceptions of a responsible consumer in permanent conflict with the rest of society, and willing to go to extremes and be intransigent.
• The hermit is a second image often evoked, of a responsible consumer at odds with society, isolated and marginal, often deprived and returning to the past, to the steam engine.
• The killjoy is a sad, over-serious person, always doing what's right rather than having fun, and willing to moralize.
• Finally, at the other end of the spectrum, the responsible consumer can also be seen as a snob, in which case he or she is perceived as the "bobo", haughty, superior, subject to the influences of the media and the effects of fashion, and also having the financial means to do so.

Analysis of these different negative archetypes of the responsible consumer reveals just as many obstacles to the adoption of responsible consumption behaviors. Respectively, we identify a barrier to integration, linked to the fear of conflict induced by a posture perceived as too fundamentalist, "to the point"; a barrier to desirability, with that other form of marginality associated with the hermit and the refusal of modernity; a barrier to hedonism, if we follow the killjoy, incapable of any spontaneous pleasure, and rationalizing every consumption decision. Finally, the "bobo" responsible consumer is associated with a lack of identification and the rejection of an elitist, condescending stance.

All too often, we see these archetypes, relayed and conveyed by advertising, of the unsexy responsible consumer.

Several types of negative perceptions

As a next step, another piece of research we published examined the extent to which these archetypes could actually have an explanatory effect on responsible consumption intentions and behaviors. The study, carried out on a sample of 363 individuals, analyzed respondents' reactions to a message inviting them to follow a recommendation made by a responsible consumer.

Firstly, the statistical analyses clearly identified three types of negative perceptions, depending on whether they qualified the relationship with oneself (risk of loss of desirability according to commonly accepted criteria of beauty or youth), the relationship with others (risk of loss of socialization linked to the perception in the eyes of others) or the relationship with modernity (risk of being out of step with the present and modernity).

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The study went on to show that while perceptions of the responsible consumer remained positive (on the whole, respondents did not criticize the responsible consumer outright for urging them to behave responsibly), the associated negative perceptions influenced intentions to behave responsibly.

The study also shows that self-perception as a responsible consumer moderates the observed effect. For consumers declaring themselves to be less responsible on average than the rest of the sample, any defect associated with the responsible consumer - be it a lack of sociability, desirability or modernity - is likely to penalize behavioral intentions. On the other hand, for consumers who declare themselves to be more responsible on average than the rest of the sample, only the defect of modernity can still negatively influence their intentions. They are probably the first to suffer from the lack of modernity associated with the image of the responsible consumer...

Responsibility injunctions

Today, the pressure of current events on our behavior is even greater. The health crisis, then the recent manifestations of the climate crisis, and finally the crisis in purchasing power, in a context of energy crisis and inflation, all tend to multiply the injunctions for more responsible consumption.

While the impact of these crises is likely to see a gradual narrowing of the gap between attitudes and behaviours in terms of responsible consumption, it will also be interesting to see what impact this will have on the perceived image of the responsible consumer.

How glamorous, sociable and modern will she become in the immediate future? To what extent, above all, will we not need such positive figures to accompany us in the transitions to come?

Gilles Séré de Lanauze, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Montpellier and Jeanne Lallement, University Professor (Marketing), La Rochelle University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.